This invention relates to an electrical generating and storage system which uses both wind and solar energy to produce electricity.
In recent years, as the need for green technology solutions has become more apparent, electricity generating system installations have gone through a dramatic evolution away from carbon-based industrial generating systems towards solar energy and wind energy solutions. While solar energy and wind energy solutions both have well-established benefits in regards to carbon dioxide emission reduction, the variability of electricity generated from these devices has been a problematic concern for governments and other organizations charged with making electricity generation infrastructure decisions to balance electricity demand with the supply availability. An important concept in this context is “dispatchability”. Dispatchable energy sources are energy resources that can be ramped up or shut down in a short amount of time in response to demand.
It is well known that a negative statistical correlation exists between wind energy and solar energy on all time scales. For example, on a daily time scale, solar energy is only generated in daylight hours, with a peak generating capability when the sun has reached its peak altitude near the noon hour; whereas wind energy generation is possible throughout the entire day, but tends to peak in the late evening and non-daylight hours. On a monthly time scale, in a northern hemisphere country such as Canada, solar energy production peaks in July and is at its least in January. Wind energy on the other hand is observed to peak in the winter months or coldest climate, when air density is at its highest, and is at its least in the summer months, when temperatures are at their highest, and air density is at its lowest.
It follows that marrying wind and solar into one system could have significant advantages. However, wind energy systems and solar energy systems currently in use tend to be separate. Wind energy systems consist primarily of stand-alone horizontal axis wind turbines (HAWT) solutions, and stand-alone vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT) solutions. Similarly, solar collection systems consist primarily of stand-alone of photovoltaic solutions and concentrated solar power solutions.
There have been some field installations in which stand-alone horizontal axis wind turbine solutions and photovoltaic solutions have been combined, and share real estate area. The inherent benefits of such installations have been publicly cited, fundamentally that greater power is generated per unit of area, and that the impact of windmill shadows on solar collector performance is relatively insignificant when compared with the power generation benefit gain. However, these systems tend not to be well integrated with each other and tend to operate as if they were stand-alone units just sharing the same real estate.
To date, there do not appear to be any effective systems offering a well-integrated approach towards combining the capture of both wind and solar energy.